sony vegas
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BluesCam
Well-known member
I just started using it. It can do quite a bit and will handle many formats. I use it to make streaming files. I'm trying to get used to the interface. The documentation isn't that great. It's probably a good idea to get some training videos to get up to speed.
I don't like editing with a VGA monitor either. I may eventually try FCP. I have used AVID, Media 100, Speed Razor/Matrox, and Vegas. They all have their +/- I think Vegas 7 has some nice improvements but I'm still using V.5. It will handle 24P and will generate EDLs for finishing in HD suites. I may use it to offline a doc shot in HD.
I don't like editing with a VGA monitor either. I may eventually try FCP. I have used AVID, Media 100, Speed Razor/Matrox, and Vegas. They all have their +/- I think Vegas 7 has some nice improvements but I'm still using V.5. It will handle 24P and will generate EDLs for finishing in HD suites. I may use it to offline a doc shot in HD.
ReadyTeddy
Member
Sony Vegas is really the industry's little secret. It's a great program that virtually no one knows anything about.
Last year I did a comprehensive survey of all the commercially available software packages for PC going from Avid XPress Pro down to U-Lead. Avid was indeed powerful but a nightmare to integrate and keep going. It likes only specific types of hardware and needs specific drivers to work right. It also needs a pretty muscular machine and lots of RAM and disk space.
Sony Vegas turned out to be the surprise. It has an easy and intuitive interface so you can figure most things out pretty quickly. There is documentation... but it's on a PDF file. The manual is over 300 pages and goes into a lot of depth about the power of the program. I've found the best software is the kind that allows a newbie to generate decent work but has the power under the hood to handle most anything an experienced user needs.
The other nice thing about it is that it doesn't need a supercomputer to run. I tested it on a four year old AMD XP Athlon system with a Barton core... 64MB AGP Radeon 7500, 512MB of RAM, a 20GB system and 200 GB PATA 5400 RPM data drive... hardly cutting edge hardware. It ran candy dandy... very quick and responsive, even on the renders. I even put it on a DELL Latitude D800 with an older Centrino and it was great. It's a nice laptop solution for editing on the fly at locations.
There is a downside, however. Since it's a SONY product, there isn't a lot of support built in for non-SONY CODECs like DVCPro and DVCProHD. In fact, no support. There is a 3rd party plug in which will allow it to digest DVCPro footage, but I haven't tried it.
For min-DV, DVCAM and HDV, Vegas is really nice. It's also cheap. The full v7 package is available for under $500.
Last year I did a comprehensive survey of all the commercially available software packages for PC going from Avid XPress Pro down to U-Lead. Avid was indeed powerful but a nightmare to integrate and keep going. It likes only specific types of hardware and needs specific drivers to work right. It also needs a pretty muscular machine and lots of RAM and disk space.
Sony Vegas turned out to be the surprise. It has an easy and intuitive interface so you can figure most things out pretty quickly. There is documentation... but it's on a PDF file. The manual is over 300 pages and goes into a lot of depth about the power of the program. I've found the best software is the kind that allows a newbie to generate decent work but has the power under the hood to handle most anything an experienced user needs.
The other nice thing about it is that it doesn't need a supercomputer to run. I tested it on a four year old AMD XP Athlon system with a Barton core... 64MB AGP Radeon 7500, 512MB of RAM, a 20GB system and 200 GB PATA 5400 RPM data drive... hardly cutting edge hardware. It ran candy dandy... very quick and responsive, even on the renders. I even put it on a DELL Latitude D800 with an older Centrino and it was great. It's a nice laptop solution for editing on the fly at locations.
There is a downside, however. Since it's a SONY product, there isn't a lot of support built in for non-SONY CODECs like DVCPro and DVCProHD. In fact, no support. There is a 3rd party plug in which will allow it to digest DVCPro footage, but I haven't tried it.
For min-DV, DVCAM and HDV, Vegas is really nice. It's also cheap. The full v7 package is available for under $500.
the reason why i am asking
The reason why I am asking about vegas. My station just bought a bunch of sony XD cams F350s. Sony threw in the vegas software to. I have been tasked to try and make it work. I have just gotten up to speed with premiere pro. I edit on a laptop in the field. Trying to ingest video from dvc pro into premiere has been a pain. We want to see how fast we can get video and audio
from the xd cam into vegas and then cut a package. How hard is it to learn vegas and does it compare to premiere
The reason why I am asking about vegas. My station just bought a bunch of sony XD cams F350s. Sony threw in the vegas software to. I have been tasked to try and make it work. I have just gotten up to speed with premiere pro. I edit on a laptop in the field. Trying to ingest video from dvc pro into premiere has been a pain. We want to see how fast we can get video and audio
from the xd cam into vegas and then cut a package. How hard is it to learn vegas and does it compare to premiere
ReadyTeddy
Member
You shouldn't have too many issues.
The other nice thing about Vegas is that it supports the Blackmagic capture cards, so it's good for broadcast applications.
I've only tested the software with SONY cameras and tape decks, so I can't speak to making it work with DVCPro based machines. According to the company, XDCAM is natively supported in Version 7.
The other nice thing about Vegas is that it supports the Blackmagic capture cards, so it's good for broadcast applications.
I've only tested the software with SONY cameras and tape decks, so I can't speak to making it work with DVCPro based machines. According to the company, XDCAM is natively supported in Version 7.
Canonman
Well-known member
That is absolutely true. Full implementation for XDCAM HD. One thing you'll need to do though, is enable XDCAM explorer in the preferences window. It's not on by default when you install the software. Vegas & allows you to edit the proxy files, then conform to the full res HD material for final output.
I just got it a few months ago. I'm trying to use it for a quick laptop solution on XDCAM HD.
cm
I'm trying out Vegas right now with HDV. I'm not liking it. It can't playback 2x 1080i HDV streams in real time at full resolution. No effects, just setting the opacity of one to 50% and then putting it on the timeline over a different clip.
This is on a HP xw8200 dual (not dual core) Zeon 3.4 ghz with 2.5 Gb of RAM and a dedicated video drive. What gives?
This is on a HP xw8200 dual (not dual core) Zeon 3.4 ghz with 2.5 Gb of RAM and a dedicated video drive. What gives?
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Canonman
Well-known member
HDV is processor intensive for decoding and playback due to the high level of compression involved. Trying to get two HDV streams being decoded in real time is going to put some serious stress on your system. If you need to edit multiple streams, I suggest you transcode to an intermediate i-frame codec. I believe Vegas includes one flavor of the very nice Cineform codec family just for this purpose.
And if you think this is bad, wait until you try to edit AVCHD in real time. That's the encoding scheme Panasonic is touting as a way to increase their P2 record times by 1.5X.
It's always a trade-off. More compression yields smaller storage requirements, but higher CPU load, while maintaining acceptable image quality. Less compression becomes more of a storage issue and data throughput requirements increase to the point of needing RAID disc arrays to shovel HD through in real time. But the CPU load goes down with less compression.
cm